Kadanuumuu ("Big Man" in the
Afar language
The Afar language ( aa, Qafaraf, links=no; also known as ’Afar Af, Afaraf, Qafar af) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken by the Afar people inhabiting Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Classification
Afar ...
) is the nickname of KSD-VP-1/1, a 3.58-million-year-old partial ''
Australopithecus afarensis'' fossil discovered in the
Afar Region of Ethiopia in 2005 by a team led by
Yohannes Haile-Selassie, curator of physical anthropology at the
Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Based on skeletal analysis, the fossil is believed to conclusively show that the species was fully bipedal.
At more than in stature, Kadanuumuu is much taller than the famous
Lucy fossil of the same species discovered in the 1970s, and is approximately 400,000 years older.
Among other characteristics, Kadanuumuu's
scapula (part of the shoulder blade), the oldest discovered to date for a hominid, is comparable to that of modern humans, suggesting that the species was land rather than tree-based.
Not all researchers agree with this conclusion.
See also
* ''
Dawn of Humanity
''Dawn of Humanity'' is a 2015 American documentary film that was released online on September 10, 2015, and aired nationwide in the United States on September 16, 2015. The PBS NOVA National Geographic film, in one episode of two hours, was di ...
''
References
External links
An early ''Australopithecus ''afarensis postcranium from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia-- Original peer-reviewed paper.
Images of the fossil and its excavation{{portal bar, Evolutionary biology, Paleontology, Science
Australopithecus fossils
Transitional fossils
Afar Region
Neogene fossil record